Ultra Ethernet Consortium Wants To Optimize Networking For AI And HPC
The Register, Thursday, July 20,2023
Not changing the standard, but tweaking how applications work over top
A group of tech companies has kicked off a project to adapt the Ethernet standard to make it better suited for the demanding network requirements of AI and high performance computing (HPC) applications.
The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) aims to create a "complete Ethernet-based communication stack architecture" that will be as ubiquitous and cost-effective as Ethernet while offering the performance of a supercomputing interconnect.
Founding members of the consortium include those heavily involved in HPC and networking, including Intel, AMD, HPE, Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Meta and Microsoft, with the project itself is hosted within The Linux Foundation.
UEC chair Dr. J Metz told The Register the goal of the project is not to change Ethernet but to tune it to better accommodate the more demanding characteristics of both AI and HPC workloads.